Heavy rains have killed at least 32 people and forced more than 100,000 from their homes in recent days. Emergencies have been declared in various states, and the country’s Caribbean coast has been particularly hard hit by mudslides.
In a televised broadcast from one flooded area on Sunday, the president told the National Guard to begin moving families into vacant hotel accommodation.
“See how many buildings there are abandoned by tourists, and from today begin to occupy them with families,” he said. “You will not pay anything,” he told displaced people.
The El Universal newspaper quoted the head of the National Guard as saying flood-stricken people had been moved overnight into a hotel in the coastal resort of Higuerote.
Mayor General Luis Mota Dominguez told the newspaper the owners of the hotel had put the facility at their disposal.
The government said 101,684 people were being cared for at 710 shelters across the South American nation, and that 300 tonnes of humanitarian aid had been distributed in the western state of Falcon, the country’s hardest-hit region. More than 2,700 doctors had been deployed to guard against any outbreak of disease at the shelters, it added.
Torrential rains and floods have also hit neighbouring Colombia. A mudslide there on Sunday buried up to 145 people, a local official said.
The rain has already killed 170 people in Colombia this year and made 1.5 million homeless, albeit over a longer period.
Chavez blamed “criminal” capitalism for disrupting the global environment with disastrous consequences for most of the earth’s people.
Chavez has given 25 families refuge in his presidential palace and ordered space to be made for others in ministries, army barracks and an upscale mall in the capital Caracas.
